Keith Gottschalk pays tribute to poet and novelist Tatamkhulu Afrika, who turned 80 late last year
We’re here to commemorate Tatamkhulu Afrika the human being; to salute Tatamkhulu the citizen activist; and, last but not least, to celebrate Tamtamkulu the writer, by rejoicing on his 80th birthday and bagging his free autograph at his 12th book launch.
The District Six Museum and Snailpress today commemorate an extraordinary life, a remarkable epic of four-score years that span a continent, the Great Depression, racism and two wars.
Tatamkhulu holds at least two South African records. He has written and published fiction for more than 61 years. I know one South African astronomer has published in scientific journals for a longer period, and Barbara Cartland published yet longer, but Tatamkhulu certainly holds the current South African record for fiction.
Second, Tatamkhulu is one of the very few South Africans who fought in the Union Defence Force (in World War II), and in Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), like Joe Slovo. He is the only South African known to have been interned in a Nazi prisoner of war (POW) camp as well as detained by the apartheid Special Branch.
It took all my persuasiveness as a historian to get Tatamkhulu to give me permission to mention today the bits never mentioned in print in his formal biographies: Now it can be told! This is on condition that all of us keep on calling him by his praise-name, Tatamkhulu Afrika.
We’re today celebrating Mogamed Fu’ad Nasif, born on December 7 1920 in As Sallum, a harbour town, where the railway ends, on Egypt’s border with Libya. He was born in a Muslim family, of an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother, a citizen of Africa’s oldest civilization. To apartheid’s race classification laws, he was thus born “Other Asiatic”, ID number to end in “07”.
He was orphaned by flu at two years old and raised by friends of his late parents as John Charlton, Christian and white. His foster family, who lived in South Africa, saw the rising white racism around them during the 1920s and 1930s. The education departments tried to purge children not white enough, children “slightly coloured”, from whites-only schools.
John Charlton’s new family cautioned him never to talk about his Egyptian dad or Muslim family. To apartheid, John Charlton would be “White”, ID number to end in “00”.
His foster family was bankrupted by the Great Depression. They left their farm to run a bottle store. In these years Tatamkhulu first showed his commitment to writing and his talent. He bunked his matric year at school to write a novel. He wrote a novel at 17 and had it accepted by an international publisher Hutchinson’s in London. That is Tatamkhulu’s third South African record.
Broken Earth by John Charlton received rave critical reviews. This included the Luftwaffe, who raved so much they remaindered the novel, bombing the publishers’ warehouse in the Blitz.
Tatamkhulu volunteered for the South African army when World War II broke out. He was among the thousands of South Africans captured during the second fall of Tobruk and interned for three years, first in fascist Italy, then Nazi Germany.
During this captivity he secretly wrote his second novel, Bitter Eden. When the SS closed the camp and sent all POWs on a forced march westwards, they discovered his manuscript and tore it up in front of his eyes. (Fortunately Tatamkhulu has rewritten Bitter Eden from memory. Publishers, take note.)
After the war, Tatamkhulu worked for almost 20 years in his third African country, Namibia (then South West Africa), as a miner. He has also worked as barman, drummer in a band, shop worker and finally became a bookkeeper a delightful title for an author.
In 1964 John Charlton moved to Cape Town, a harbour town where the railway ends. There, he took an extraordinarily rare stand on principle, one that very few others, certainly no author, did under apartheid. John Charlton, Christian and white, became Ismail Joubert, Muslim and “non-white”. The Race Classification Board decided that made him “Cape Malay”, ID number to end in “02”.
It is a tribute to our democracy that it is hard today to recall what that meant. When John Charlton needed to be admitted to a public hospital, he would sit on a bench for two hours: Ismail Joubert might have to queue two days, have cheaper medicines, and be discharged sooner. If out of work for health reasons, Ismail Joubert would only receive half the grant or pension John Charlton was entitled to.
Ismail Joubert took his principled stand further, founding Al-Jihaad to fight apartheid. The Special Branch detained him in 1964, mocking his religion and Sergeant Spyker van Wyk assaulted him (his specialty being enjoying throttling).
In 1966 the regime proclaimed District Six “whites only”. It speaks of the degree of repression at the time that merely writing a letter to the newspaper protesting this led to deportation. But Ismail Joubert resisted deportation and by 1986 he and Al-Jihaad were linked with MK. The youthful Africans fighting alongside him gave him his isikhahlelo, that is, his praise name Tatamkhulu Afrika, Grandfather Africa, Old Man Africa.
In 1986 he was detained again. After a fortnight he was charged with terrorism and illegal possession of arms. After 18 months of an on-off trial, he was convicted and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, suspended.
Some stories do have happy endings. Today our new democracy considers Tatamkhulu Afrika a Muslim, an African, and above all a South African, whose rainbow nation ID number, like all others, ends in “88”.
Tatamkhulu’s life-choices explain to us how his writing, his literature, unflinchingly confronts what many others cannot fear and degradation. cowardice and humiliation, life and death. In prose and poems he repeatedly forces us to look at loneliness, longing to love and be loved.
His work has honesty, humanism, eloquence; it has realism and social awareness. Tatamkhulu has won at least six prizes for 12 books his fourth South African record. We’re all going to buy his new book, Mad Old Man under the Morning Star, and get his autograph. Each of us will have our favourite lines. Among mine are:
The moon’s twisted husk, still falling,
winks out in the silent violence other side the Hill,
the boiling silence of its cloud.
No aloneness is there like
The rain’s stare meeting mine,
Only the window’s glass between
And no tongue to sing to me of the stars.
This is an edited version of an address given at the launch of Mad Old Man under the Morning Star, published by Snailpress, at the District Six Museum